


Sweet King of Nothing

by Xairathan



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21596959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xairathan/pseuds/Xairathan
Summary: So long as I remain here and wait to be called again, that is all I need. So long as these things remain true, everything will be alright.
Relationships: Demon King Nobunaga | Avenger/Okita Souji Alter | Alter Ego
Comments: 1
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This entire fanfic got spawned out of a literal translation of the name of someone in my cohort it's funny how these things happen huh

_This is the Edge of Eternity, the place I have been given to watch over. In a place such as this, the impossible becomes possible. The immortal becomes killable. An anomaly that was only supposed to be given a single breath in the lifespan of humanity can become a timeless guardian._

_This may be the edge, but it is still connected to Eternity. Time moves around this place. I see it in the drifting clouds high overhead. I know it by the things I no longer recall. There had been, once, something I enjoyed. Simple shapes on a skewer, soft between my teeth. I no longer remember their name nor their taste, but that is fine— I remember what is important to me._

_My Master, hair like fire, and the place I briefly called my home. Chaldea, where Heroic Spirits gather in defense of humanity. Yes— I had been a part of that. That is the assignment I had been given, to right the course of human history. Master brought me to Chaldea, even though I was supposed to disappear. I no longer remember their name, but that is alright— they will always be my Master._

_There was another, too. Someone I shared a room with. I do not remember whether it was hers or mine, but I remember her name. Maou Nobunaga, the Demon King. She was warm in a way the sky in this place could never be. Kind: that is the word I used to describe her. I no longer remember what she said when I called her that. All but the faintest outline of her smile is a mystery to me, but I do not mind it. I still remember, and that is enough._

_My name is Majin, the Devil Saber. I remember this, too. Someone in Chaldea made me promise never to forget it, and so I will not. I will keep watch over this place until I am needed and called forth, as is my duty, and I will not forget my name, as is my promise._

_So long as these things remain true, everything will be alright._


	2. Chapter 2

Sunlight and water stream off Kippoushi’s face as they break through the surface of the river. Around them echo peals of laughter and the ringing of cicadas: the sounds of another Owari summer. 

“I thought for sure you were gonna crack your head open when you jumped in!” One of the boys claps Kippoushi on their shoulder, reddened from the sun and their tumble into the river floor. “You really have to go in headfirst?”

“‘Course they did!” another one shouts. “Or else they can’t see with all that hair in the way!”

“Hey!” Kippoushi protests, throwing up a wall of water with a swipe of their arms. Their companions shy back at first, some ducking into the river to hide. Retaliation, when it comes, is a swift but unanimous splashing: enough to drench Kippoushi a second time, even though they’re only hip-deep in the shallows. Their sputterings earn them only more mouthfuls of water, until they’re forced to duck into the river to escape the onslaught.

The river closes in over their head like a second sky, clear silver painted over cloudless blue. Kippoushi kicks out, swaying against the current. Refusing to let the river carry them, refusing to surface and return to their world. The moment must break eventually. Kippoushi’s legs can’t sustain this artificial stillness for long, nor can they continue to ignore the burning in their lungs. Kippoushi stays in spite of this, forcing the moment longer. Something in the shimmering heavens is speaking to them: a reminder of lost days. If they could only endure for a bit more— surely it’ll reveal itself to them.

Kippoushi’s lungs give out at last. They shoot towards the surface, shattering the second sky, droplets of withering blue falling from their matted hair. The sun has all but fled the sky, its trail one of blazing sunset. Down the river, the other boys are splashing towards the shore and shaking themselves dry, gathering up their clothes.

Instead of joining them, Kippoushi stares transfixed at the sky. They pay no mind to the chilling of the water around them, the breeze sweeping in from the south. Something in that sky, in its brilliant reds, cries out to be remembered. 

But the only thing Kippoushi hears are the calls of the other boys, scrambling up the riverbank: “Kippoushi!” they shout back. “You gonna stand there all night? You gonna go home, or not?”

Their voices catch the wind along fading cicada calls, dissolving into aimless noise. Go home, they’d said, but there’s no home to return to. Kippoushi remembers this now, a rush of returning memory like a torrent that threatens to sweep them off their feet. Home is long gone, lost to the relentless march of time. The closest thing to a home they remember no doubt sits as a derelict ruin at the southern pole, left for the elements. 

Home is gone, but it’s here— the sprawling forests where the Fool of Owari had played, the castle where they’d shed that mantle and taken up the name of Nobunaga, the future of the Demon King. It isn’t Kippoushi standing in the river anymore. The Demon King strides out from the water, dampened hair clinging to her back, watching the receding shadows of Kippoushi’s companions. They’ve gone ahead already, because Kippoushi had always told them to do. It’s what’s expected of them by her memory— that’s what this is, all of it, from this river winding beside the town to the castle looming over it at the foot of the hills. 

This had been home, once, but not to the Demon King. She’d spent her life crossing the country; the closest she’d come to settling was a castle near Kyoto, by Lake Biwa. Hills and rivers and lakes— a reminder of Owari, of happier days abandoned for duty’s sake.

There’s no need for imitation or pretense any longer. Owari is unfolded before Maou, ripe for the taking. This would be no act of conquest, but simply acceptance: Owari as she remembers it is long gone, and with it the humanity she’d been so taken with, but that doesn’t have to spell an end. Maou would know better than most, how impermanent endings are. 

It would be such a simple thing. It would be as easy as stepping out of the water. Maou wades towards the river’s edge, until the water is hardly a trickle against her ankles. She won’t leave the river, but she can allow herself to imagine it. The Demon King is hardly a stranger to the allure of hedonistic dreams, and this is just one of those: a wish that will never come to be. It can’t, because there’s something more she wants, what can’t be found here. 

Maou turns her back to the town, the castle. The river seems to swell with her resolve, lapping at her calves, her knees. Its course has changed: not visibly, but something’s different about its depths. No longer does it reflect the fiery sky. The shifting surface of the water sings of something crystalline white, a distant destination that even someone like the Demon King is left to only dream of reaching. 

Maou closes her eyes, pitching forward. She doesn’t splash into the water so much as it surges to meet and take her away. She tumbles briefly in its depths, a whirl of her cape around her shoulders, and then even that’s gone.

What the legend of the Demon King doesn’t mention is that she had found a home, though not so much in a place as with a person. They aren’t to be found in Owari, or even Japan— they’re beyond, at the impossible boundary of infinity, supposedly unreachable. But if this edge exists, Maou thinks, then there must be a way to get there. Otherwise, how could it be named? The paradox makes her head throb, or perhaps that’s just the light: blinding, white, coming from everywhere at once.

Maou opens her eyes to find she’s left the river. Gone is Owari’s lush green, and even the limitless expanse above betrays no hint of color or cloud. She’s surrounded by white, brighter than even sunlit snow, the same blankness in every direction. 

She’s awakened, as she has for so long, back in the endless plains of Eternity. 

Maou curls her fingers into a fist, pushing herself to her feet. Her hand presses against something soft: a length of red fabric, doubled over against her palm, tattered ends fluttering with her movement. A scarf she hasn’t worn, a promise yet to be kept. Maou indulges, briefly, in moving it through her hand, the well-worn fabric pliant under her glove. The urge passes quickly, gone and forgotten like a heartbeat. There will be time to reminisce later. Tucking the scarf into a pocket, she continues her journey across the eternal desert.There’s no end in sight yet, but someday there will be. There has to be, by the simple knowledge that Maou bears in her chest alongside the fire that sustains her being; there’s someone at that edge, and Maou’s kept her waiting long enough. Someday, that end will come in sight, that elusive Edge of Eternity that only someone as relentless as the Demon King would seek. 

Until then, Maou keeps walking. 


	3. Chapter 3

_ There have not been any summons in such a long while. That does not worry me— no matter what goes on in the world around it, this Edge of Eternity will stay unchanged. Things that should not be meet their ends here. If I have not been called, then it means the world is as it should be.  _

_ The sky here is blue, as always. Today’s clouds come in little wisps, enough to throw faint shadows on this white canvas expanse. I do not know where the shadows come from. There is no sun, but it is always bright here.  _

_ When I was in— when I stayed with Master, I saw a picture once. It was a sky like this: bright blue and mostly clear. There was a sun, but also a ring of light. Master said it was the Noble Phantasm of a creature called— of the one who had tried to incinerate humanity. It was the mark of what Master called a Singularity. _

_ I forgot what Master said a Singularity was. I think this could be one. The clouds above me drift in rings. Maybe the light comes from them, or through them. Maybe at the end of the sky, there is a light like the one in the picture. _

_ If Master were here, I wonder what they would say. I wonder if they would look—  _

_ There is hardly any wind here. Master would look less like fire and more like autumn leaves. I had said that once, to someone. To— to someone like coal, dark and burning. To someone warm. She had laughed, and said— _

_ And said— _

_ My name. _

_ My name? _

_ What is my name? _

_ I do not remember. Someone made me promise never to forget it— _

_ But when, and where, and why? _

_ What is my name? _

_ That does not matter. I did not have a name, once. I still kept watch over this place until I was needed and called forth. That was and is my duty.  _

_ So long as I remain here and wait to be called again, that is all I need. Everything will be alright.  _


	4. Chapter 4

Against the endless field, any contrast of color, or even its memory, clings to the mind. The shadow of Owari lives in the darkness behind Maou’s eyelids. She sees it imposed on Eternity in moments: flashes of trees, the running rise of hills long since carved away by time and the relentless progress of humankind. Maou does not begrudge them that. She understands the human drive to expand and shape the land to one’s liking. Once, she had felt such urges, too.

She had left those behind, she thought, along with the memories that follow her from dream to dream. There’s a reason she’s called Maou, and not Nobunaga. Nobunaga is a name, a warlord; the Demon King is an idea. It’s the perfect culmination of a thousand timelines threaded through the eye of the Throne of Heroes, distilled into a body ravaged by the World’s disdain for her and the death at Honnouji her very existence defies.

But at her core, she’s still Nobunaga. Not any one in particular, but one nonetheless, and neither Nobunaga nor Maou have ever been one to shy from their wants. If her heart longs for lost days, then let it. Maou has nothing she can say she regrets, but that doesn’t mean she can’t admit to missing these fragments of her once and former life. 

Her traitorous heart must have won fate’s favor today. The sound of running feet swells in her ears. Even from a distance, she hears the familiar call that had chased her for so much of her youth: “Big sister!” 

The wind catches Maou’s hair as she turns. A gust of red obscures the world. In its passing, the shadows left behind by her blinking swell into fullness: wood beneath her feet, open air and trees stretching all the way to the horizon. Between them, the familiar shape of Owari as seen from the high balconies of Nagoya Castle. Nobukatsu, cape bouncing against his shoulders as he runs, covers the final distance between them with flagging steps. His hand darts out, gripping the rail while he doubles over, gasping for breath. Just like a fish on land, Maou thinks. She had called him that once, as Kippoushi. Now Maou has grown, but Nobukatsu’s stayed the same, and the crown of his head hardly fills her palm as it had used to.

“Nobukatsu?” Maou sounds more amused than puzzled, and even then, hardly surprised. She’s scorned death and seen impossible realities cut short. The idea that her younger brother is somewhere he shouldn’t be is expected, almost a welcome return to mundane days. 

“Ah- big sister-” Nobukatsu holds up a hand, still working to catch his breath. The flame at the end of his hair flutters, as if threatening to be put out by his gasping. He lifts his head, glances up and down, and says, “You’re taller…?”

It sounds like something Nobukatsu would say: boyish, thoughtless. Maou’s laughter takes to the skies, a stream of it that seems for a moment like it could encompass the heavens themselves. This is indeed her younger brother and no conjuring of her mind; only Nobukatsu would have thought to say something like that.

“I am,” Maou says, lips rising in a grin. “What’re you doing here, Nobukatsu?”

“Ah, well. That.” Nobukatsu waves his hand at the landscape, or tries. His fingers refuse to relinquish the rail and provide nothing more than a light fluttering. Sucking in one last breath, Nobukatsu draws himself up, shoulders rigid and squared. He’s trying to imitate Maou’s stance; he probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. “So, you know how there aren’t any summons anymore, right? It looks like the Throne of Heroes is undergoing some restructuring because of it.”

“Restructuring?” Maou repeats, waiting for Nobukatsu to continue. He had always been best with theoretical things like this. Maou, for all her raw strength, was a warlord first, and a thinker only after Honnouji. Best to allow Nobukatsu these moments; god knows he had never been given enough while they lived.

“It’s spilling over into Eternity, or- or something,” Nobukatsu says. “I’m still trying to figure it out, but look!” Another gesture, this one successful: a two-armed wave at the rustling trees beneath them. “The fact that we’re both here proves that Heroic Spirits can meet in this place, where we couldn’t before. If we looked far enough, I bet we could find others.”

Well, he’s not wrong about that. Nobukatsu must see the wistful tinge that pulls at the edges of Maou’s smile; he leans forward, wringing his cape between his hands. “So?” he asks, peering up at her with bright eyes. “What do you think? Do you want to… I mean, it could be just like before! You could take over as much as you wanted, and I could help…” 

She could. Already Maou can taste the airs of conquest on her tongue, the mingling of bitter ash and blood, the sweetness of inevitable victory. She could be the Demon King again, everything she was and more. The Nobunaga she’d been had lost her younger brother out of necessity, but no longer. She could defy the dream that had visited her on the longest, darkest nights, one filled with fire but left her no more warmer and far more lonely.

If only that gaze were Nobukatsu’s alone. If only it didn’t remind Maou of another place to be, someone who needed her just as much; then, she might’ve chosen to stay. But she says, “I can’t, Nobukatsu. I have to keep going. There’s someone who needs me.”

“Who?” Nobukatsu surges forward with sudden brashness and strength. “Why? I need you too, big sister!” He reaches for the hem of his sister’s cape, and for once, she allows him to take it. She’s not quite sure why— she chalks it up to his abrupt movement, her unwillingness to shy away from the necessary. (Deep down, in a place she’d never let her mind visit, she admits that it’s as much for Nobukatsu’s sake as her own. They deserve a parting that hasn’t been soured by betrayal or duty.)

“Do you really?”

“I do!” Nobukatsu glares up at Maou, the rivers of Owari reflected in the saltiness collected in his eyes, threatening to overflow. “Don’t you remember, big sister? I hardly accomplished anything at all— after they took you from me, all I could figure out how to do was betray you.”

“Because you couldn’t let go,” Maou says, softly. “If you had, you would’ve learned that you always had the potential to stand on your own power.”

“It wasn’t fair that you had to—!”

“I know.” Maou’s hand finds the top of Nobukatsu’s head, ruffles his hair with a slowness that seems born of familiarity. Were it not for the truth— that Nobukatsu had never seen his sister grow into her power, nor that Maou had distanced herself from her brother after the first time he’d turned on her— they might believe it to be. Nobukatsu reaches up, tugs weakly at Maou’s wrist, teeth digging into his lip as his tears waver on the verge of spilling over.

It wouldn’t do to leave him like this. The Demon King is by no means kind, but she’d been human once, and time has made her no less sentimental. “Katsu,” she says. “Listen to your big sister, alright? I have to keep going, but that doesn’t mean you should waste this chance. Go make something for yourself out here, as an order from your big sister. We both know you could always have done it.”

“And what if I do?” Nobukatsu blinks his eyes clear, but can’t quite stop the sniffle from leaving him. “Will you come back and see what I build?”

“Maybe.” Maou pulls her wrist free, but lets Nobukatsu keep hold of her cape for just a little longer. “I’m not sure if there’s such a thing as coming back from where I intend to go.”

“Then what was the point of me coming here?” Nobukatsu tightens his grip, draws his arms closer to his chest. “We couldn’t see each other in the Throne of Heroes, and the one time we can—”

“Really, Katsu.” Maou steps forward with the pull of her cape, arms spreading to envelop her younger brother between them. He bounces against her armor, hardly a thump, sniffling louder. “You of all people should know when a goodbye might not be one after all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means.” Maou moves back, taking her cape with her. Nobukatsu, small and forlorn, stares after her as she moves to the balcony’s edge and over the rail. Turning back to face him, she looks over Owari one last time: they are the only members of their family left here, but perhaps that’s for the best. This can be the Owari that her brother made, if only he’d been given the chance. “I’ll leave the rest to you, little brother.”

The sun shines in Maou’s eyes as she swings herself from the balcony, but not enough to blind her. That’s the sight she’d wanted buried in her mind for the next portion of the journey to come: Owari, in the height of spring; her brother, cheeks shining with spilled tears as his timid smile had forced them over. 

If there’s a way to the Edge, then there must be a way back, but Maou leaves the possibility unspoken. Things would be different there; there’s no use giving Nobukatsu false hope, not when she knows well how he handles things pertaining to his big sister. For the moment, she hopes what she’s done will be enough. Maybe, if she’s right, there’ll come a day where they meet again in the highest room of Nagoya Castle, greeting each other with open arms rather than drawn swords, a reunion left untouched by fire.


	5. Chapter 5

_I am a Counter Guardian. That is the name of my position. I am an agent of the Counter Force. It is my duty to watch over this place, this boundless land with its unending sky. It is my duty to wait here until I am called._

_I have not been called in such a long time. I no longer remember what the longest time I had stayed here before was. I know it is nothing, compared to now._

_But I do not need to worry. If I am not called, I am not needed. If I am not needed, then_

_don’t be silly,_ _ Majin_ _, you’re always needed by someone_

_then that means the world is as it should be._

_There is hardly any wind here, and still the clouds move. They come from nowhere and journey up the infinite sky. I_ _like to_ _watch them sometimes, although I do not know_

_isn’t it beautiful? aren’t you glad you stuck around now,_ _Majin_ _?_

_why._

_I had done this once_

_somewhere._

_It had been someplace colorful. Full of_

_trees and grass, a place someone else had called home. A place that was not my home._

_There was_

_i think it looks good on you_

_There is something in my hair. Someone had given it to me, at that place._

_It comes loose easily. Small, falling between the gaps in my fingers. A color I have not seen for so long. A color that only I, in this empty place, possess. Red. Important to me. I_

_ do you like that color, Majin? _

_It reminds me of warmth. Of_

_it’s called happiness,_ _ Majin_ _._

_some strange feeling in my chest. Of something on my face. What was it called? How do I do it again?_

_Maybe_

_If I hold this to my chest_

_if you like it_ _, i can get you some more when we go home._

_Maybe_

_My heart will remember._


	6. Chapter 6

Owari has long since faded from Maou’s mind’s eye. She clings to its remains: fragments of green hills, flashes of her brother’s smile. Bits of the past, memories to guide her, a shield for her sanity even as a lump of fabric tucked against her breastplate guards her heart. They are what drives her on, beyond the boundary of endless white and into this place she’s known of in concept, but never reality— until now.

This is a place Maou knows well, even if only through dreams and her claim to it. Once sprawling whiteness has yielded to ashen earth. Blackened ground stretches as far as the eye can see, towards dark clouds lingering on the far horizon. As Maou is the culmination of all the possibilities associated with Nobunaga, this is the place where those possibilities' swords gather. At some point, before she’d taken her sword up for the first time, it had dwelled here, waiting for the Demon King to call it from its rest.

When had that first time been, Maou wonders, and when had she ceased to think of the Demon King as less a title and more a name? Perhaps she’d known the answers once. Time has worn them from importance, from her. Maou would know well enough the necessity of leaving behind such extraneous things. After all, what hadn’t she given up?

Warm seasons spent in the safety of Owari, a dear younger brother who could have accomplished so much more, if only his older sister had been there to see him grow into a man. The reliability of folded iron, abandoned for volatile black powder and the increasing ravenousness of the flames she’d unleashed. They’d been just like her: pointed in a direction and left to rampage freely, uncontrolled, until what remained of those who opposed her was little more than ash ground ignominiously into the dirt. 

Perhaps that was why Mitsuhide had turned on her. Even so long after the fact, Maou still doesn’t know what it was that had driven her retainer to betray her. She’d lost his trust somewhere along the way, and with it so much more. She’d lost her life in a temple called Honnouji, and her form in its fire. This body of hers is little more than a facsimile imagined by the Throne of Heroes. An impossible tangle of scars is the only thing that gives it away: laid across her body by countless battles, they tell the story of lives cut short by bullets and blades; most commonly, by fire.

Death, in itself, is a yielding of life to the inevitable, but Maou’s had been unique. She had, in the end, surrendered everything. What remained of her was a title and a reputation imprinted upon the Throne of Heroes. The rest, she’d found for herself from her summonings. Humanity, in pursuit of its best, requires a guide, and Maou has always been one to lead. 

Only now, humanity is gone. Its remains live on in the legends they’d made, among them a Demon King with no subjects to give her claim to that title. Maou pauses in her relentless stride, surveying a particular clumping of rock. Where she’s going, there’ll be no need for a Demon King’s sword. Should she need it, she’ll always be able to call it to her side; should it not come, well, she’d always been more of a rifle kind of person at heart.

Drawing her blade from its scabbard, Maou holds it up to the sunless sky. Its edge catches the light, the gleam of fires smoldering around her. Her one companion for as long as she’s been Maou, finally brought home for rest: somehow, it seems fitting. Maou stabs it into the earth, new cracks forming in the rock to let searing magma ooze forth, the blast of hot air doing little more than to blow Maou’s hair back. A shrug of her hips sends the sword belt falling. Caught by nimble hands, it ends up draped over the katana’s hilt, wound tight around the guard and buckled shut. 

Surrounded by smoke and burning rock, this is how Maou imagines her sword must’ve looked like before she’d called it to her. Beautiful, devastating— fitting words to describe the weapon of the Demon King. She reaches out, palms the pommel, gives it one last fond pat farewell. She isn’t as sentimental as to speak where only rock and soot will hear her. Instead, the slow swaying of her cape around her shoulders says her final goodbye for her. 

Maou leaves behind, except for herself, the last reminder of her existence as the Demon King. It isn’t out of regret— no part of Maou’s memory since she’d come into being is tinged with that emotion— but out of progress. Such a heavy weight will only slow her down, and there’s so much further still to go. There is one thing that remains that the Demon King will not surrender, would gladly give what little remains for, that she has and would gladly endure Eternity for. 

Leaving her sword to preside over her realm, Maou continues on. Unnoticed, the knot of dark clouds ahead circles an unknown point far beyond the most distant volcanic field: an end, not in sight, but an end. 


	7. Chapter 7

_ Now _

_ There _

_ My hand _

_ Something red _

_ Always when I wake up it is there. _

_ Why? _

_ I never know _

_ It was _

_ Just now _

_ I had a dream, it was _

_ red _

_ and gold like _

_ Warm _

_ the thing that is not in this sky _

_ It’s something from long ago _

_ A memory _

_ I no longer _

_ The only time I remember things now _

_ are when I dream _

_ Red, always _

_ so _

_ red _

_ Important _

_ Important to me _

_ Red _

_ From Eternity away _

_ When I had still been called _

_ Red _

_ between my fingers _

_ warm _

_ Important _

_...why? _

_ Something is wrong with the sky it is _

_ I cannot see it clearly _

_ white and blue _

_ my eyes hurt _

_ like they are _

_ red _

_ The clouds are all a circle _

_ I cannot tell them apart anymore _

_ Escaping up like _

_ something red _

_ and black _

_ Important _

_ to me _

_ My face is hot _

_ Something wet _

_ It does not rain here _

_ Why…? _

_ This _

_ This sound _

_ The first thing I have heard since _

_ long ago _

_ Like… _

_ Breaking, glass falling _

_ I cannot see the sky clearly and _

_ it has broken and _

_ even if the sky is broken _

_ (if this place is broken _

_ have I broken, too?) _

_ There is _

_ something missing from here, so it will never _

_ be _

_ red _


	8. Chapter 8

The end of Eternity is not so much an edge, but a wall. Stretching up into the sky, a thousand facets shimmer with the fire of the landscape burning at Maou’s back. It blurs endlessly in every direction, a barrier that speaks of scorched land and bleached sky, but nothing of the Demon King who sits before it. Perhaps the Edge had just never considered the possibility that someone else might reach it.

High above, the clouds gather and pass overhead. They seem to be the only things allowed to continue on; or else they’re disappearing into someplace Maou knows nothing of, perhaps the beginning of Eternity to start their journey again. Maou’s tried that, a tentative kick to the barrier that produced nothing but an exquisite, ear-shattering ringing.

Had she been her younger self, or any less worn by the world she’d loved, Maou would’ve taken that as a challenge. She would’ve assailed it with a barrage to put Nagashino to shame; but that, like so much else, will have to remain simply an idle imagining. Her younger self would never have found her way to the boundary of Eternity. It wouldn’t have been because she’d lacked the will, but the drive. Experience has mellowed Maou’s fire; where Nobunaga would have burned bright with it, Maou contains herself to a steady glow, a guiding light, reserving herself for those rare displays of power that declare her essence as the Demon King.

The barrier, and Maou, remain where they are: one last impasse between herself and the World. She wonders: would the World as it had called Majin even exist in the same capacity? She’s put so much faith into something Majin had mentioned only in passing, thrown her fate upon it.

The boundary ripples with Maou’s throaty laughter, scarce chimes mirroring the low rumble of her voice. Of course Maou would do something so seemingly foolish as that. She is, at heart, still Nobunaga: foolhardy enough to chase after scant hopes.

A second sound cuts through the bell-like ringing like a sword, a cracking: thunder from the heavens, or a shattering of the earth. Maou is on her feet in an instant, rising as fast as flame. Her leg lashes out at the barrier in a kick, followed swiftly by flames streaming from Maou’s lips. Her movements are thoughtless, instinctual. This close to the Edge, maybe it’s a bit of the World Majin had been bound to leaking out into Maou; or else it would be her proximity to Majin herself, the one being left that Maou is beholden to.

A red flicker pierces the perfect mirror of turbulent earth and sky. Maou kicks out, again, again. There’s something there, a rift widening steadily to a sound like screaming gunfire, louder than anything Maou remembers from her countless battles. Racing upward, that streak of color is lost just as quickly in the clouds.

For the first and only time in this portion of Eternity, it begins to rain.

As with all things in this place, the rain isn’t what Maou knows it to be. It’s little fragments like crystal, glittering as they fall, splashing into rounded discs where they land. No cloud releases them; they flow freely from the breach in the barrier, newly made, a narrow gateway into the colorless plain beyond. Maou hurls herself through it, casting aside the gathered glass nestled in her palm. The rain is no longer a curiosity, not when she can see a speck of black and red against the white, familiar, but not in the way that reflected landscape had been.

“Majin!” The name tears from Maou’s lips, roaring across the Edge of Eternity. Her boots leave a trail of soot across the bright nothingness, a shadow of the still-widening crack in the barrier. Majin, crouched with her knees against her chest and her head against them, turns: her eyes gleam with the light of plated gold, frozen yet vibrant, the glimmer of dawning recognition just beginning to come up behind them.

The earth flies beneath Maou’s feet. She’s come so far, and still this final distance is the longest one to cross. Majin stands on trembling legs, takes a delicate step towards her. Her hands open and close, as if seeking something to grasp that should be there. Her fingers curl around empty air; another moment, and they’re brushing against Maou’s cape, burying themselves up to the knuckles on her hand in warm and flowing red.

“Majin.” Maou’s hands wrap tight around Majin’s shoulders, pulling them tight against each other. How long it’s been since the last time they’d done this— how much the world has changed. For all of that, in spite of it, some things remain the same. Majin’s head still fits snugly beneath Maou’s chin, that wisp of hair threatening to tickle Maou’s nose and make her sneeze. There’s that little shuffling Majin always does when they embrace like this, a weighing of herself as if to ask how much she can lean against Maou before she inevitably entrusts the Demon King to support her body.

Majin sways between Maou’s arms, shifting her head around. The slightest tilt of her chin brings her gaze to bear against Maou’s. Just as quickly, her eyes flit away. This close, Maou can see the dampened track Majin’s tears have laid down, the shuddering of her lips as she struggles with speech once familiar, now so distant as to have been forgotten in its entirety. Her hand leaves Maou’s cape briefly, but only to skate disbelieving fingers across her silvered skin, shaking wetness from them before redoubling her connection to the Demon King, face all but hidden, tucked away into her breastplate.

Maou keeps still through all of this. Her only movement is the slow and fond drag of her hand through the Devil Saber’s hair. The urgency she’d been possessed by only a moment earlier has drained away. With Majin close to her like this, she could wait forever, could endure the rest of Eternity simply caught up in this singular moment. It wouldn’t matter if it took as much time to undo Majin’s silence as it’s been since they parted. They’re here. There is the warmth of another that both of them have gone so long without; there is the quiet gasp of Majin’s tears and the smooth sigh of Maou’s own reassurance.

At last— after what might be minutes or days or an aeon gone by (whichever it is doesn’t matter; nothing could matter more than Majin)— the Devil Saber lifts her chin again. She doesn’t so much look at Maou as get lost in the rivers of red hair draped over her, but her voice comes clear through them. It’s as soft as Maou remembers it to be, and a little raspy, as if like a sword, rusted over from incalculable lifetimes of neglect and only now beginning to be restored to fullness.

“Majin?” Majin repeats, enunciating the sounds deliberately. “That is… me?”

“Yes,” Maou says. “That’s your name.”

“My…” Maou feels Majin move, a shaking of her shoulders that shrugs Maou’s hair away, clearing enough to the sides for their eyes to meet again. She’s fixated on something, Maou can see it in the subtle shift of her face. Maou knows this, too: less recognition and more an acknowledgement of something’s familiarity; she hears it mumbled in Majin’s timid voice, at first too indistinct to make out.

“Red,” Majin says, finally loud enough to be heard. Her fingers knit closer together, tug a little harder on Maou’s cape. “You are… so red…”

“Yes…?” Maou nods, carefully bringing one hand against Majin’s. Perhaps it’s her reply; perhaps it’s the simple touch of skin on skin. Whatever it is, Majin doubles over, held up only by Maou’s arms, renewed tears pattering helplessly against Maou’s breastplate.

“I missed someone red,” Majin tells her. Her fingers work in Maou’s cape, gathering fabric into her palms, as if somehow the act of holding it will sustain herself against the uncontrollable rush of her own emotion. “I— red is something that I—”

Majin glances up, mouth opening and closing, at a loss for words. As before, as she’s done so often, she looks to the Demon King for guidance. Maou takes in the sight: the Devil Saber clinging tightly to her, the ribbons in her hair worn away not by any combat or weather, but simply by constant and repeated touch. “Like?” Maou prompts gently, and that’s it. That’s the word that’s eluded Majin for so long. She nods, takes more of Maou’s cape into her hands, refuses to stop even when the fabric spills from beneath her palm and drapes over her own arms.

“Ah— right.” Maou moves one hand off Majin’s back, reaching for the inside of her cape. Her motion sends Majin into a flurry of movement, clutching at the cape now being pulled away from her, the warmth of another’s touch that she’s only just begun to remember the feeling of. The change is instant: a frantic brushing against her bracers, the sharp harshness of Majin’s breath. “It’s alright,” Maou tells her, squeezing her wrist reassuringly. “I’m not going anywhere. Just giving this back to you. See?”

Maou loops her hand once over Majin’s shoulders, draping her scarf back in place. It settles over Majin as if it had never left, accompanied by a slight shaking of her head as she burrows the lower half of her face into its softness. Spending so much time with Maou has left the scarf with the faint scent of ash and burning embers: not what Majin remembers it to be, but no less comforting.

“You gave this to me when we parted ways in Chaldea,” Maou says, tugging the ends even with each other and letting them slip from her hands. “And I promised I’d give it back to you someday. Do you remember that?”

Majin nods— that had been a dream of hers, rarely seen and less understood with the passage of time. Leaning forward, she presses the ridge of her brow to Maou’s chest, further masking herself with the scarf’s fabric. “Warm,” she mumbles, and feels the low rumble of Maou’s laughter. Just as quickly, she’s pulled from memories of grey halls and back into the moment, acutely aware of Maou’s eyes, attentively watching each of her movements. The thought makes her want to hide her face again, but there’s nowhere to go. There’s just her scarf, already slipping down the bridge of her nose, and Maou, who Majin knows she couldn’t bring herself to leave for anything right now, not even the World’s call.

“How did you find me?” Majin asks.

“Would you really call it finding you?” laughs Maou. “You did tell me where you were, after all.” She glances down, watches Majin inch closer, press her cheek flush against Maou’s armor. Even more than Maou, Majin craves the novelty of sound. She basks in its familiar warmth, feels her heartbeat match and meld into the cadence of Maou’s voice. “I walked,” Maou says, fingers sinking back into Majin’s hair and working along the crown of her head. “Then I reached this place, and couldn’t come any further. There was something blocking the way— that weird barrier. I couldn’t get in until just now. Did you do something, Majin?”

“I had a dream,” Majin mumbles, and immediately realizes how silly she must sound. Maou is laughing, but not at Majin; she’d never do that, and Majin knows it.

“Is that what happened?” Maou expression has split like the barrier, a broad grin stretched across her features. “Even fate must’ve wanted us to be back together!”

That gets something from Majin: a slight tremor of her shoulders, a smile spreading over cheeks just freshly dried of tears.

“But I made it,” Maou continues. Her hands find Majin’s wrists, pull on them with a gentle tug. “You don’t have to stay stuck here any longer. We can go back—”

“No.” Majin goes still, rigid, a sudden jerking of her body. No less wide-eyed, she stares at Maou with an intensity that had been absent only an instant before. “I have to wait,” she says. “It is what I was told to do.”

“Majin.” Maou leans back, not to put distance between them, but to stare Majin in the eyes. “Humanity is gone. I don’t think you’ll be getting called to do anything any time soon.” Doubt winds its way across Majin’s face. Her gaze lingers at Maou’s hip, noticing her missing sword belt for the first time. “Come on,” Maou says, though she doesn’t do anything more than that. “Don’t you want to go back and see the others?”

“I…” Majin sways back and forth, unsteady on her feet. She cranes her neck around Maou, glancing at the still-fraying gap, back at Maou. “I would… still like to wait.”

“If that’s what you want.” There’s no disappointment in her tone, only the same patience with which she’s always fielded Majin’s requests, from the ordinary to the outright absurd. Spinning Majin around, Maou brings them both to the ground, pulling Majin into her lap. The Devil Saber settles against her easily, naturally, curling up against Maou until the only space left between them comes from the rise and fall of their breathing. “We’ll stay here until you want to leave, then,” Maou says. “Or until the barrier is broken. How’s that?”

As one, they both turn to look back at the gap Maou had come through. It’s nearly doubled in width, still stretching into the sky far beyond what either of them could see; its edges, eaten away by an unseen and accelerating force, fling beads of what remains into the air to come down as misty, glass-like rain.

“What if you are wrong?” A quiver has worked its way into Majin’s voice. “What if one of us gets called away somewhere?”

“Then I’ll wait, if it’s you.” Maou tilts her head, lets her cheek come to rest atop Majin’s hair. That loose strand sways perilously in front of her vision, tickling her own bangs. Maou has to suppress the urge to laugh as she says, “And if it’s me, then I’ll find my way back to you. Ah, don’t look at me like that— I’ve done it once already, haven’t I?”

She had, and it had taken so long. Maou understands the fear that shines clear in the Devil Saber’s eyes, engraved in the tightening of her jaw. They’d spent so long apart; it had been, perhaps, a matter of pure luck that Majin had ended up dreaming of her. “Promise me?” Majin whispers, her voice hoarse and thick with worry.

“I promise,” Maou tells her. “I’ll find you again, one way or another.”

“Okay,” Majin says. Her hands reach up for the edge of Maou’s collar, tugging the cape around her shoulders until she’s all but vanished beneath it. What remains visible of her to the sky are the top of her head and the loose sprig of hair standing up from it. The rest is hidden beneath overlapping folds of red, the sight of it so amusing that Maou can’t help but laugh. With Majin tucked so closely against her side, hair protruding from beneath its warm cover, why wouldn’t she? Majin huffs at the sound of it, eyes narrowing the slightest amount, lip protruding in a pout.

“What?” Maou says. “It’s cute!” Her answer is another huff, an indignant jabbing of an elbow against her ribcage. Not once do her eyes leave Maou’s; they stay fixed on her face, watching, seeking. “Ah, not so hard, Majin! Or is there something you want from me, hm?”

“You…” Majin’s brows knit in concentration, her face contorted with uncharacteristic focus. Maou can see her lips moving again, miniscule shifts of them, trying to grasp for something lingering just beyond her reach. At last, it comes together, a hushed whisper of a word, a name for the whirlwind of feeling that hasn’t slowed since the barrier began to break. “Maou,” she says, eyes brightening at the sound that leaves her and the gentle rise of Maou’s mouth. “That is— your name.”

“Oh, did you remember?” Maou’s grin is just as soon stifled by the press of fingers up to her lips, tracing their outline with careful precision. This, too, is another remembered habit from another time. Majin shuffles closer, tilts her head expectantly, unaware of the motions she carries herself through. Only when Maou’s breath glides over her cheek does she startle with the realization of how close they are and the gleam in the Demon King’s eyes, hovering that border between tenderness and hunger.

“Yes?” Maou says. It’s a simple acknowledgement; she isn’t expecting anything. Still, she hopes Majin will dare closer. She hopes the Devil Saber will recall what comes of such closeness, the privilege awarded only to Majin out of Maou’s favored.

It would seem Majin does. A touch to Maou’s shoulder, a shifting of her body to lift herself to Maou’s height, and their lips brush. It’s only a fleeting feeling at first, nothing more. Their heat is what draws Majin back. Turning until their bodies are flush against each other, she leans in again, and finds herself taken up by Maou. Their mouths meet, tangle, connect. This is it: what Maou had hoped for, what Majin’s been missing this whole time. This is the one being who still knows Maou as the Demon King more than anything else; this is the Devil Saber that Maou had crossed the impossible to find, all for a promise she’d made to ensure Majin wouldn’t have to continue enduring alone.

When they break apart, Majin retreats again, tugging Maou’s cloak far over herself so as to disappear entirely. “Majin?” Maou asks, poking at the protrusion of her hands. “Why are you hiding?”

“I—” Majin shakes her head, moves as if to peer out from her cover, reconsiders. Still, she tugs the other end of the cloak in, too, so Maou is wrapped up in it alongside her.

“Is there something else you want?” Maou prompts her gently. Majin goes still, but again, only for an instant. She nods, slightly parting the curtains of her hideaway to stick her face out from between them.

“Can we really stay here?” she asks.

“Until you decide to change your mind, if you do,” Maou answers.

“And you won’t mind?”

“Of course not.” Maou’s hand squeezes through the gap, ruffles the top of Majin’s head. The gentle push of Majin’s scalp against her palm does not go unnoticed. Maou shifts her shoulders, brings Majin in a little closer. Their bodies find a balance between them and settle into place, this fitting together an almost natural thing; the only natural thing in this place. For the first time in the history of the Edge, its light is warm: that comes from Maou, her smile and her cape, and perhaps from the breeze wafting in from the burning plain that Maou has left behind. Forgotten by Maou and Majin both, the never-ending cylinder of clouds breaks at last, making for the gap in the barrier, a train of white escaping out into the openness, perhaps in the direction of home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i appreciate how the final segment is like 33% of the entire fic by mass


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